Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Snowman Construction

For someone living in the northern region of Japan in Nagaoka - one of the region where it snows the most in Japan, I should be too-familiar with the white snow every day. Ironically, for all the time I have been here, I have not made a single snowman at all yet; not even when I was away for my ski trip last month. During the Nagaoka Snow Festival held in my place recently, there was one event which was part of the snow festival called 100 だるま大会 (Hyaku daruma taikai) or literally, "100 Dolls Contest".

There was not many people who participated in the snowman building contest on that day. The heavy snowfall must be one of the reason why people chose to stay away from the site.

When I was there, there were only a couple of families who were working hard on their dolls.

Since I will be at the festival site until it got dark to catch the night illumination and not having much thing to do, I decided to give a try on building my first ever snowman. I signed up my name, gathered all the required tools that were provided to us, which I would be using them and picked a spot to start my snowman construction.

While walking to my spot, I walked passed many kinds of snowman in various shapes, sizes and names. Surprising enough, most of the teams built stuffs other than snowman. The closest one that resembled a snowman that I could recall was the model of one of the most famous Japanese anime character, Anpanman.

As for the rest, they opted for animals, like rabbit, bear and even frog.

Bugs Bunny who is overweight.

Winnie the Pooh without his honey pot.

No idea already what is this lah.

The one that left me reminded of the kiasu syndrome was the gigantic snowman built by a team who named themselves Sorimachi. Now I know that Japanese can sometimes act like Singaporeans as well. They can be sure that no one would be building something bigger than their Snowman King.

All this while, I thought building a snowman is as easy as building a sandcastle. Nevertheless, it was much more difficult than my initial expectations. To prepare the base is one thing, to gather enough snow to make the body of my snowman is another thing to consider. A complete novice like me had to resort to looking at those little kids on the correct way of making a snowball. A perfect snowball that won't fall to pieces when I attach them to the other parts. After putting tiredless effort on my snowman, I finally came out with one which unfortunately, looked more like a cat.

The most impaired snowman you will ever see.

You know, the cat drawings we always draw when we were in our kindergartan and primary years. Two circles, one big and one smaller, with a tail and two ears, plus the whiskers. My cat snowman however, looked otherwise. Laugh as much as you want. It deserves your laughter. I know my snowman doesn't look as nice as how a snowman should look like, but this is only my first try.

So, give me a break lah, okay?

Still, I am not sure whether to call it a snowman or a cat without whiskers until today.